To care for those who bore the battle

Abraham Lincoln closed his second inaugural address with these words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all ... let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”

“To care for him who shall have borne the battle” became the motto of the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is in our national fabric, deep within our national soul, to see that those who defended and secured our freedoms are never neglected or forgotten. We are as one on this.

So we are outraged to find evidence that scores, perhaps hundreds, of our veterans died while waiting for treatment in our system of VA hospitals. The news broke when federal investigators, acting on a tip from a whistleblower, descended in force on the Phoenix Veterans Hospitals, where it’s alleged as many as 40 veterans died while waiting for treatment.

There are reports of “secret waiting lists,” showing the real backlog of veterans. If such lists exist, it means the official waitlist reports were falsified. “If you died on that (secret) list ... there was no trace that you’d ever been to the Phoenix VA,” the whistleblower told The Associated Press.

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Because we have engaged in two wars over the last 13 years, and multiple hot spot military actions, the number of veterans seeking treatment has grown almost exponentially. There is a widespread consensus that the backlog is unacceptable, and there has been immense pressure to deal with it. And now evidence is emerging that some VA workers sought to hide their inabilities to deal with it.

It’s one thing to focus on the numbers, but to understand the plight of our veterans, we need to know their stories. Trust me, my dad served in Korea. We can never forget their sacrifices.

Take the story of Edward Laird, a 76-year-old Navy veteran living in Phoenix who was directed by his doctor to get a biopsy of two growths on his nose. Laird waited months for a biopsy. By the time he got it, it was too late to save his nose. “Now I have no nose and I have to put an ice cream stick up my nose at night ... so I can breathe,” Laird told the Los Angeles Times.

Too many veterans wait months for critical medical tests. As the Times and others point out, this problem is systemic and long-standing. And the flaws exist in many VA services, not just the hospitals. As The National Journal concludes:

“Looking for a lone villain in the VA debacle, however, is a fool’s errand ... the sheen of shame over the VA’s failures spreads across time and party affiliation. It stains the legacies of presidents as far back as John F. Kennedy and condemns past Congresses whose poor oversight allowed the problem to fester.”

The problems with the VA have existed for decades, despite the attempts of several administrations to fix them. And Congress, which is responsible for funding the VA, must be held equally accountable. Despite lip service about “supporting our troops,” Congress has failed to adequately pay for the services our veterans deserve or provide the oversight necessary for transparency and accountability.

We can, of course, avoid the issue, and instead set up the veterans as props to score political points, or advance someone else’s business interests, which privatizing veteran’s care would do. Though federal prosecutors and VA investigators do not yet have evidence proving criminal neglect, or even the secret lists, some are calling for the VA secretary to resign.

Max Cleland, a former U.S. senator, and former head of the VA, lost both his arms and one of his legs in the Vietnam War. This week, he said we should take the bull’s-eye off VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, also a wounded veteran of the Vietnam War. Cleland calls Shinseki “a truth teller to power.” We have no evidence yet of wrongdoing by those in the hospitals. How can we fire this distinguished veteran before we have all the facts?

Is it too much to hope that Congress will put its money where its mouth is? Or that, on this one issue at least, “we the people” and bipartisan problem solving will trump the pandering to special interests and self-promotional posturing?

President Obama dispatched a senior aide from the White House to assist in the investigation. The VA is also conducting two separate investigations. Several oversight committees on Capitol Hill are gearing up to hold hearings. Federal prosecutors, veteran associations and the national media are on the scent. Trust me, the truth will come out.

But, we already know the truth: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

This time, let us make real the words and vision of Abraham Lincoln. Let us focus on identifying the problem “with malice toward none,” and let us make the priority providing the services, at whatever cost, that will “care for him (and her) who shall have borne the battle.”

Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News, and a contributing columnist to Ms. Magazine and O, the Oprah Magazine.